1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates firstly to a dredging assembly and more particularly to a dredging assembly which serves to be used at difficult to access waters such as reservoirs in or behind mountain ranges.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Silting up of deep reservoirs, for example, can cause problems, such as environmental danger and can lead to the blocking of rivers, and of installations in or near the reservoirs.
Presently, sludge from the beds of these types of waters are mainly dredged up by sucking up the bed sludge which is subsequently transported away. A first problem here is that a lot of water is sucked away with the sludge, for instance 7 parts water to 1 part sludge is not unusual. This has of course a negative influence on the water level and/or on the amount of dredged up sludge to be transported away.
Sludge dredging by suction at depths of roughly 50 meters is also not able to be carried out with a great deal of accuracy since the suction pipe has the tendency to suck up everything that it comes into contact with.
Dredging assemblies are know from the Dutch patent application 7903974, the British patent application 450932, the Canadian patent 1259635 and the German Offenlegungsschrift 2417545.
However these assemblies are not suitable for dredging at depths of about 50 meters for example and suffer the same problem as suction dredging in that a great deal of water is removed along with the dredged up material.
A further problem is the accompanying logistics of the transporting to and assembling of such dredging systems at difficult to access stretches of water.
An object of the present invention is to provide a dredging assembly which substantially obviates at least one of the above mentioned problems.